


núi không gian

by historynut101



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Acceptance, Alcoholic Booker | Sebastien le Livre, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, BAMF Quynh | Noriko, F/F, Flashbacks, Good Quynh | Noriko, Immortal Wives Andy | Andromache of Scythia/Quynh | Noriko, Love, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Quynh | Noriko-centric, Tea, Team as Family, The whole gang is here, Trauma, WOW some angst in this, a bit of derogatory language, but this is a character study of quynh, her mind is fucked, just for the boys, little bit of latin, she was under the ocean for centuries my dudes, tons of vietnamese language and culture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-24
Updated: 2020-12-24
Packaged: 2021-03-10 18:42:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,779
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28281870
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/historynut101/pseuds/historynut101
Summary: Quynh’s eyes snap up to meet a collision of phenomena so strong it nearly blinds her, brightly wild and loving for eternity and heartbreaking in its loveliness and endlessly forgiving and deathless inky black. The full force of it pulls her in, like gravity.It is quê hương, the home of her heart, her soul.More than anything, Quynh wants to reach out her fingers to trace the edges of Andromache’s face, but something raw and red and raging instead commands them to lie still, so there they sit, not touching, not breathing, barely even being. Call it cowardice. Call it the anxiety of being harmed. Call it heady memory that sticks in the now. Whatever it is, it seizes her whole against her will.Quynh wishes she could do more, but that’s not in her nature right now.(Or: Quynh and the intersection of her past and future)
Relationships: Andy | Andromache of Scythia/Quynh | Noriko, Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 25
Kudos: 54





	núi không gian

She had forgotten the stars.

She had forgotten the taste of air.

She had forgotten sound itself.

Down in the depths, she had forgotten many things. 

And yet still, she burned with knowing. Years of screaming in the dark, with only a second of air forever, her thoughts only had each other for company. Rising anger met dwelling misery across the centuries, madness was tempered by scant memory, and wishing became dreaming. 

After a while (she thinks; there was not time then, only the screaming now), she saw other things in the water. A man in a uniform she did not recognize, choking for days at the end of a rope. She felt him die as often as she felt herself. They were companions in agony until he finally knocked himself free with his ceaseless struggling. Her friend in death was gone, so she now only watched, and burned for air. 

He froze and killed and hobbled and died and lived and starved and cried and searched. What for, she did not know. But she could guess. She guessed it was something to do with a family who never died that she too had been searching for.

Then: rough tan hands decked with rings wring a robber’s neck before the lost man's eyes. Soft white skin speckled with blood as a crusader sword arcs through the air. Finally, black hair, cut shorter than she remembered, but the same blazing green eyes as ever, glancing through the fight.

She says it with her, “My name is Andromache.”

Quynh dies with those words on her lips. Then she lives again, only to scream until she loses her half-second breath once more.

She tries not to dream so much after that. It hurts to see it, to see them, to know them. Her wishes die and her rage only sets her more alight. 

After eons of death pass once again, now starred with painful memories of her family without her, she watches a dagger pierce dark flesh. She feels new death, raw and unforgiving. She braces herself to scratch and scream as another heap of experience is shoved into her head, but something knocks against the metal of her cage. 

She sees nothing. She has seen nothing but sea glass and curious fish and hell for years, but then she sees something. It is bright against her raw eyes and closes around her prison. Suddenly she is lifted, up and up and up. 

She sees light, she sees something beyond death, she sees a darkened outline swaying above her. Then, she breaks the surface.

Quynh breathes in for the first time in hundreds of years without choking. In that moment, she tastes life.

Blinking in the long forgotten sunlight like a babe, she feels something wrench apart her cage, scratched and dented from her struggle as it is. It opens and she sees another human face for the first time since she was sealed away and forced to live through a lost man’s gaze and an earnest girl’s eyes. 

She should taste happiness, ecstasy, gratitude, disbelief. But instead, she looks into that first face, frightened and pale, dripping wet and bewildered, and only sees the men who threw her into the tide with hatred in their souls.

She tastes rage.

She pounces and her hands wet themselves with blood.

....

“Quynh? Hey, we’re almost there.”

Quynh shocks herself awake, forehead pressed to clear glass. The after image of limb and loss swims before her, stuck in the water that still clogs her mind.

A hand grasps her shoulder and she flinches away from the sensation, skin wrenching up and away. The hand pulls back fast, its owner’s face flashing into view; Quynh can just about make out a thick beard and worried brow. 

Quynh feels the rumble of wheels beneath her (smoother and faster than she ever remembers, but familiar nonetheless) and glances out the car window at a field of swaying grain that reaches towards the last dregs of sunlight. She closes her eyes to breathe, taste, hear, center. She reclaims her senses from the depths one by one. She opens her eyes when she’s ready and meets Joe’s still furrowed face. She nods, “Okay.”

He manages a slight smile before turning towards the front. She thinks that’s the end of it so she too faces the front window, watching a farmhouse inch closer on the horizon. 

But she senses Joe’s sparkling eyes on her once again. She turns to find a small brown paper package sitting in his palm. She arches her brow, just this side of playful. Joe smiles wide, teeth glinting in the waxing sun. She takes the package, a little baffled at what he had hidden from her this whole trip across the European countryside (a trip to her first mission back after rising from the sea like some undead god to wreak havoc on the world, her first time fighting with something inside her besides anger in centuries).

When she pulls the package apart, it reveals a tiny assortment of ma'amoul. It was her favorite treat, before. Joe would make them whenever he had the ingredients, and she swore his secret recipe for the date mix inside bested that of any master. He never told her what he used to make them special; he claimed it was an immortal secret. 

Painfully, she is reminded of who they used to be. 

Them, in a safehouse somewhere between the howling steppe and mossy riverland. Andromache out in the half-wild garden, spinning her axe as sweat falls off her brow. Nicky, reading quietly in the next room, sometimes calling out favorite lines in the fresh, blooming dialect of Vietnamese she taught him, or the old, lilting Zeneize he taught her. Joe, sitting at the table nearby, pressing the dark, sweet mix of dates into the ma'amoul's simple dough, his fingers artfully twisting as his tongue responds in rushing Arabic to Nicky’s lifted quotes. 

Quynh, standing at the hearth over a clay pot, coating their fish from this morning inside with _cá khô tiêu_ , sticky and spicy and dripping with memory of a mother long gone and a land long banished from. As the rice steams nearby at the edge of the fire, she closes her eyes to breathe in the sound of good food bubbling and words tumbling over each other and family finally at rest. The sound registers in her head as home. When she opens her eyes, she catches the glint of the night’s first stars out the window, and sticks her head out with a smile to call Andromache in to eat.

Quynh drags herself away from the reminder of what was and instead focuses on what is now (ever harder when, as her days in this new modern world lengthen, her memories of the past sharpen too). To finally put to rest her reverie, she looks at the crafted pastry, obviously made with care. There are designs of concentric circles, fresh flowers, and interlocking grooves. In an effort to hold in her tears, she glances away, once again taking in the sky bleached red by the oncoming night. 

Freshly-healed anger surges in her throat, this time directed at herself. The guilt is like bile, coating her mouth with the need to reject the gift, to don her brother in arms with a thousand apologies for her actions, but when she finally slides her eyes back towards his, she is met with a gaze so soft all her words die in a second. 

He smiles again, toothy and loving as ever. It is tempered with sadness, but Quynh can forgive it. Joe always was a sensitive soul; one touch to the raw inside him and he is set spinning. 

Finally, the car rumbles to a stop; Nicky calls out their arrival in a mixture of modern Italian and medieval Latin. As Nile stretches like a cat in the front seat, Joe and Quynh hold each other’s gazes for a half second more. 

Then, Nile slams the car door, sweeping her braids over her shoulder in the same motion. Joe winks, returning Quynh’s playfulness from earlier, before clambering out with, “You coming?”

Quynh smiles, her grin toothy like his (all the while suppressing the ever rising edge of the sea darkness over her head), and says, slowly, simply, “Yes.”

....

Inside the farmhouse, the last stages of planning begin. Their target is a local warlord who has turned her workers into slaves to manufacture weapons. She has carved out a nice criminal empire for herself, complete with a citadel and an awe inspiring number of countermeasures, but the team aims to dismantle the whole system in one stroke. 

Luckily, the safehouse on this farm is a very old one. It is off the radar, secluded, and full of grand old things they have accumulated. It’s not quite a cave in the middle of France, but it is hidden from a discerning warlord’s eye. And modern electrical grids.

Quynh settles on the sunken couch and listens to the strategy. They’ll break into two teams to take the warlord and destroy the base from the inside. It’s simple enough, but the knowledge that she will be on a team with Andromache causes fear to catch in her throat, right at the base of her neck. While she rubs at the juncture between her shoulder and neck, Booker grips the armrests of his chair until his knuckles are white. He leans over to whisper in Andromache’s ear. When he receives no response but a pointed look, he shoves his chair away and stalks out the door to meet the dead of night. Quynh rubs her neck harder; she wonders what to do for a minute or two, but realizes after dodging Andromache’s tense looks that she has to go out there. 

She rises, and the candles they lit earlier flit about. As she walks by, Nicky catches her eye. He is pressed against Joe from ankle to shoulder, but his eyes are for Quynh. They gift her a resolve that she was sorely lacking; when she looks away, her spine is just a little straighter.

When the backdoor creaks open, she sees Booker immediately. He stands in front of the lake that the farmhouse rests on the shore of. She watches Booker skip stones for a minute (or maybe ten), before walking towards him. 

He hears her approach and his shoulders grow even more hunched. The next stone he throws slaps the water angrily. She hears its loud plops in tandem with her footsteps. Then, the lake swallows it and she stops just behind Booker’s shoulder. She waits for him to speak.

She doesn’t have to wait long.

Booker turns to her, his face a storm, “I don’t know if we can trust you. This mission is important. The team is important. We need someone who can watch our backs. I don’t know if that’s you; after everything, how can it be? I know what Andy says-”

Quynh cuts him off, “I understand, but I am here. I will fight for this team, this family. I made a promise.”

His eyes lurch away from hers to skid another stone across the lake’s surface. As it jumps along, flashes of Quynh putting a blade to his neck and Andromache in a white hospital gown reaching out to him interweave. History sits between them. At the center, there is Andromache, softly whispering, “ _We are not angels of death, Booker. We can give out second chances._ ”

“Okay,” he says, taking a swig from his hip flask, “you’re in.”

Quynh watches the ripples as he turns and stalks away. She catches his half-hidden mumble, “For now.”

....

She doesn’t know how the mission ended.

They had arrived at the side of a mountain, the base tucked on a cliff’s edge. It was just as fortified as they expected.

Quynh, Andromache, and Nile had approached quietly, slowly, singularly. They were supposed to sabotage the vehicles and move in to cut off the warlord’s exit. The first part went off without a hitch; they stunned guards in their way and stopped trucks in their tracks with no pause. Nile moved with razor precision, swiveling from foot to foot, assault rifle kicking back into her shoulder. Andromache ricocheted bullets off her axe while slicing guts apart. Quynh cut brake lines with her sword before twirling to cut kneecaps just the same. It was brutally efficient.

But then it all came crashing down, literally. They had underestimated just how much their target didn’t want to be taken alive. 

The three women had entered the main room to find the warlord standing in the middle. She had a look of pure murder on her face as she spit curses in a rough, rounded language Quynh didn’t know. 

Booker, Joe, and Nicky were just around the corner, but they never made it. Before they could burst through the other passageway, the deposed warlord pulled something metal from her pocket. It had a red button.

Nile screamed, “Bomb!”

But Quynh was already turning, pushing Andromache out the way they came. She covered Andromache’s mortal, pale body with her own deathless one. She felt wind rush past her left ear as Nile ran, screeching into her comm. 

Then, the sting of heat against her back.

Then, the inky black of Andromache's bewildered irises reflecting a burst of light past Quynh’s shoulder.

Then, the hard push her leg gave as it pushed Andromache through the door just as her hand reached out past the oncoming storm of pain and flame to close it tight.

Then, the burn; she couldn’t breathe as she was pressed up against hard, cold metal by an explosion of white hot fire.

Then, Quynh shocks awake in a truck, her head cradled in Andromache’s lap with Nile next to them. She casts her eyes wildly about only to find Booker with a haunted look on his face in the back behind them while Joe drives up front with Nicky’s hand cradled in his own.

She settles, her panic ebbing, only to look up and see Andromache’s eyes, bright and forest green and oh so hurt from witnessed death.

Quynh almost feels guilty for throwing Andromache out of the way.

Almost.

She would do it again in a heartbeat, without question. Her determination must show in her face, because Andromache dejectedly moves her head to gaze out the clear window.

Quynh lets her body hum unsteadily the whole car ride home, her instincts wanting her both to bolt from the human touch (too much, too fast, too strong after so long in the cold and dark and alone, by all the gods, she’s so _alone_ ) and to lean into it, the half-memory of Andromache’s love so strong even centuries later.

So Quynh compromises; she lays there and thinks. No moving, no touching, not even breathing.

Because, even though her lungs have reinflated and shaken off the last of the smoke inhalation, she still can’t quite get a full breath in.

Always, always, she feels water rising as she takes in a breath, the sea trying to drown her from the inside out.

When Quynh closes her eyes, even amongst the familiarity of Andromache’s lavender scent and the reassuring rhythm of Nile’s breathing, she is trapped in a world of sea glass, timeless and immortal.

....

Even in her dreams, the depths will not abate. They _haunt_ her.

The nightmares that night begin with the memory of the explosion rushing towards her, but that’s never how it ends. It’s the sea. Always. 

Drowning, screaming, dreaming, dying, fighting, it’s all she feels all over again when she slips away into nothingness. Apparently, some of her brain hasn’t caught up to being above sea level. 

She gives up on sleep after her third try; she gets up to wander past the splash of stars outside her window to the kitchen. There, she finds Nicky bathed in warm soft light from lamps and candles.

He putters about, humming under his breath as he stokes the fire in the little hearth. Without even turning around, he softly calls out, “Hello, Quynh.”

Her mouth falls open, just a bit; he always knows when she’s there, but Quynh has never quite figured out how. He would never tell her, always said it was a secret. Like the ma'amoul all over again. 

Somewhere deep inside, her heart hums at the ease of it all.

Outwardly, she snaps her mouth shut and moves forward into the light. She sits down at the table in the kitchen, folding her hands together as she teases, “Perceptive as ever, eh Nicoló?”

He tsks, “Only when it’s you, dear Quynh.”

Once upon a time, he would have leaned over and kissed the top of her head after saying something like that. But now, he maintains a respectful distance, searching for something deep in the cupboard. She wonders what on earth he could be doing before she sees it: a teapot.

 _Her_ teapot. One from her home, crafted by Vietnamese hands, and carried to a market on the Silk Road. It is old and stately, small and black. 

Nicky sets the water to warm and turns back to her, gaze thoughtful and slightly concerning. Then, he chews the inside of his cheek, something he only does when he’s especially nervous. It sets Quynh even more on edge and she lifts her chin to watch him. Then, he nods to himself and backs away to pull a brown paper package (like the ma’amoul all over again, but bigger and more imposing and much more frightening) from a black duffel bag left by the front door.

“I have something for you,” Nicky says, his brow dark. He puts the package in her hands, “Joe found it, but he couldn’t... it was too hard for him to give it back himself.”

She stands there, confused for a half second, before ripping open the brown paper to glimpse red fabric. Her heart stops, surrendering to some unseen tide. The floor drops out from under her, and she can’t _breathe_. She looks up at Nicky to find his green grey eyes lost in the shifting mirage of an assault on her docked ship by immortal (and one mortal) warriors, then the clean white of a hospital lobby as bright fluorescent lights stare in judgment. She can barely think, let alone speak, but she manages to choke out, “The coat? He kept it?”

Nicky ducks his head, avoiding the question for a moment. It’s a millenia old habit of his, to stop and collect his thoughts, especially when he needs to dispense truths he isn’t sure anyone else is ready for (she recalls a long haired knight who saw wars and goodness and tragedy and miracles and the many faces of man with frightening clarity). He swallows. She waits. Then, he lifts his gaze to hers, and says, without judgment, in sculpted, sloping Latin, “ _Tuum est._ It is yours.”

The stained red coat is rough against her fingers. Quynh knows exactly what he means as she presses her nails into the fabric. He means that this coat, along with all the consequences and actions it has witnessed, is hers to bear. She must take it all for her own. Quynh nods; at the motion, a few tears spring free and roll down her cheeks. She sets the coat, still wrapped in brown paper, down on the table so she can wipe her eyes. Nicky backs away from the table to resume the tea. 

She stares at the fabric, bloody in so many ways. It drips down her vision, overwhelming her senses, so she clings to the vestiges of reality around her. 

The most comforting thing is, of course, Nicky. He silently goes through the motions of the tea ceremony she taught him, traditional and sacred, nestled right next to her heart. 

He prepares the basket of leaves to set in the cast iron teapot, then cascades the first pour of tea over the porcelain cups to clean them, as is custom, as she taught him. Her breath shudders in her throat as she wonders how often he has done this without her. He kept the pot. He remembered all the steps. He tried to keep their family together even as she died a thousand deaths under the waves. New tears spring to life under the yawning tide of fear, loneliness, and loss that surges anew deep in her soul, but they don’t fall.

Instead, they freeze, like in a winter’s chill, as Quynh’s gaze slides from Nicky’s artful movements to brilliant eyes and tired hands standing at the edge of the candle glow.

Quynh’s mind swirls with a half-memory, words perched there for an eternity, “ _My name is Andromache_.”

Andromache’s skin is a constellation of moles and freckles that Quynh aches to touch, but she cannot reach, her fingers are still dug into red stained fabric, coarse to the touch. Andromache’s eyes flash with intelligence, and she steps forward into the light.

Quynh imagines she can hear Andromache’s bones creak when her lost love sits down at the table across from her. It’s foolish and it’s nothing, but the steady reminder of mortality is always there now. Quynh cannot ignore it. She watches. She listens. She tries to delay the inevitable. She gets caught in explosions and stares down white healed scars. She remembers who they used to be.

But also, if she’s honest, Quynh takes in the signs of her once lover’s aging with a keen interest. Eons without change, living with the same face, same hands, same body, only for it all to begin to shift. The metamorphosis is fascinating just as much as it pulls at Quynh somewhere deep inside-

Nicky sets a teacup in her hands.

She almost startles at the motion, but there’s enough warrior sense in her still not to. 

The cup sits before her, tiny and delicate. In it, green tea swirls, the result of his careful preparation.

When she looks up, he is setting a cup before Andromache too, his hand reaching out to squeeze hers. Then, his gaze is pulled to Quynh’s, and he smiles in a half-sad way before he leaves, two more cups in hand (one for him and one for Joe, who will no doubt be pining in a cold bed by now, the embodiment of drama that he is).

Then, it is just Quynh and Andromache.

Quynh, for her part, takes the time to really look at her lost love. It is easy, in candlelight that doesn’t judge and well brewed tea that waits for them to speak.

Aging is like craters in the moon, she decides. Beautiful, but the result of harshness, mortality’s ever present weight. She remembers when they knew nothing real about the heavens, but now there are planets and asteroids and seas of tranquility. Andromache was there for it all. Her face, her body, carries a map of the world. Maybe Quynh can try to read its markings now that they peek through the invisible ink that was immortality.

It’s a pleasant thought. She tries to hold onto it.

Beside them, the red coat lurks, stained dark at its hem.

The atmosphere hums, charged by the unique combination of love and wanting and separation and screaming and silence and loss and fear.

Softly, Quynh wraps her fingers around the porcelain teacup and says, “I can’t be who I used to be anymore, just as you can’t. She’s lost, out there in the depths.”

She understands things like that now. She’s had a thousand years’ learning.

Andromache just smiles sadly and peeks past the edge of her hair, “I know.”

After the moment sits and Quynh feels shame reach up through her throat like bile, a soft, humming timber comes from within Andromache, “But maybe we can be something else.”

Quynh’s eyes snap up to meet a collision of phenomena so strong it nearly blinds her, brightly wild and loving for eternity and heartbreaking in its loveliness and endlessly forgiving and deathless inky black. The full force of it pulls her in, like gravity.

It is _quê hương_ , the home of her heart, her soul.

More than anything, Quynh wants to reach out her fingers to trace the edges of Andromache’s face, but something raw and red and raging instead commands them to lie still, so there they sit, not touching, not breathing, barely even being. Call it cowardice. Call it the anxiety of being harmed. Call it heady memory that sticks in the now. Whatever it is, it seizes her whole against her will.

Quynh wishes she could do more, but that’s not in her nature right now.

The tea grows cold. Andromache eventually rises from her chair and mumbles goodnight in one of their million languages. Lavender freezes in the winter between them as Quynh nods and takes a sip of cold tea so she doesn’t have to say anything.

It tastes like regret.

....

Before the morning comes, she burns the red coat in a metal drum out back. It has dark stains all over it, especially at the height of her knees and halfway up her sleeves.

It wastes away, the fire licking around the edges, white yellow and bright. The stains flame up and she takes special care to watch them turn to ash. Booker comes to stand beside her, whiskey in hand. She is content to let him drink and watch with her, but he does something unexpected. He looks at the half full bottle, then throws it in the drum.

The response of the fire is immediate; the flames balloon upwards, spitting out violent smoke. Quynh worries it’ll be too much, but then the flames die down again. The coat is now truly charred, the color black with no trace of red. Quynh glances curiously out the corner of her eye at Booker, but the man simply fiddles with his fingers as he considers the spectacle before them. She looks away, half satisfied. 

Together, they watch until the flames are nothing but seething embers, the coat turned into ash and smoke. Quynh reaches down for her bucket of water and watches the night sky reflected on the clear surface for a minute before throwing it into the drum. The lake is still in the darkness, its surface free of any light but the moon's immortal gaze.

Booker looks to her in the darkness, nods, and walks away, steps heavy, but Quynh stays to consider the moon for a moment. 

After a while, the wind picks up and draws the scent of smoke away. In its place, the trees’ musk and the smell of flowers is ushered in. For a moment, Quynh remembers her father’s voice weaving through the night as he set her to sleep, “ _Bé con,_ you are named for _hoa quỳnh hương,_ the prettiest flower in the whole world. It’s bright and yellow like the sun, and delicate just like you, child of my blood. But it grows strong, and you will too, won’t you?”

He used to leave a picking of _quỳnh_ flowers for her when he would leave on business. He said he would always be back before they wilted. Despite not quite remembering his face or his name, Quynh still recalls how much it hurt when the flowers died and he broke his promise.

She turns from the memory and walks back into the house. The next day, she wanders into town and buys a bright yellow coat, the shade as close to the _quỳnh_ flowers of her memory as it can be.

....

A week later, Andromache strides into the main room with purpose, holding a bundle of papers. Quynh looks up from her embroidery; beside her, Nile does the same (she had been showing Nile, who, with inquisitive eyes and deft fingertips, was picking up the skill fast. She had barely known how to sew a few days ago, but now she’s rapidly passing the stages of beginner. A quick learner). Joe and Nicky had been enveloped in each other, Nicky’s head cradled in Joe’s lap. At Andromache’s entrance, Joe stills his hand’s exploration of Nicky’s hair. They both crane their necks to look, faces wide and interested.

Booker lifts his head up from where it rested on the back of an old leather chair and gruffs out, “Where to next, boss?”

Andromache’s forest green eyes harden, then soften into something unnameable as she turns to gaze at Quynh. She scatters her collection of papers, passports, and tickets across the table, “Vietnam.”

....

The first time she flew in a plane (when they ran far from her ship and her failed, misguided plan, tender trust and barely healed hurts shared among them all. Funny how immortals never seem to recover from the wounds that cut the deepest), her heart rumbled at the feeling. So far and away from the earth she had walked and drowned beneath for centuries, her fingers had dug into her thighs, nearly puncturing the denim 

To cope, she muses at the sky. Then, after watching starry eyes streaked across high mountains, she turns to catch Andromache’s own eyes, a mass of conflict and beauty and eternity. Andromache stretches her neck, the muscles strong and assured, tempting Quynh to reach out like she used to and- 

A thin white scar peeks out from under Andromache’s collar. At the sight, Quynh is thrown into the depths, drowned in darkness with no stars, her memory spinning out from under her.

She sees herself decked in a red coat, raw and raging in the new world. She sweeps her limbs, pain written into her very bones as her lungs still bubble with ever present water. She sings with hatred at the feeling as she dodges an axe swing and blocks a kick to the shins.

She knows Andromache’s moves as well as her own, spent decades remembering them as she screamed away her sanity. Quynh grips her sword, knuckles white as she fixates on the one weak point she knows Andromache has. Sometimes, when pulling up for a hefty swing, the Scythian warrior, a better fighter than any that’s lived in a thousand years, leaves her neck exposed. Quynh pounces on the opportunity, pouring all of her resentment into the move, praying she can take the crack in Andromache’s armor and use it to shatter her, graceful moves and unrelenting immortality and all. 

She ducks.

She jabs.

She slices skin.

Quynh looks up from the cut along the side of Andromache’s neck, slick and true, to her once lover’s eyes. She expected to see anger, hate, guilt, any number of the things that now occupy the whole of Quynh’s heart and will soon find a home in Andromache too, but she sees none of that. Instead, Andromache’s strong, brilliant, forest green eyes are glacial, fear warring with grief, the moon rising above the ship’s deck reflected in her tears. The woman warrior, so strong and so sure for so long, collapses to the ground.

Her blood is sticky red and it spills onto Quynh’s shoes. There is nothing but roaring confusion that keeps time with the slosh of waves against the ship. Joe’s voice shouts through the din, mixing with Booker’s hoarse scream, “No! How could you do this? She’s going to die!" 

She realizes, with a horror that shocks her soul, that Andromache is not healing. She is still weeping blood, pale fingers pressed against the rising waves of life that escape her. She tries to hold the wound shut, tense and tired with desperation Quynh has never seen. Her shoes are drenched deathly red to match her coat.

She whispers, in the terrible quiet of her mind, _what have I done?_

Out loud, she screams, mortality screeching in her ear as it hasn’t since Lykon bled out before her eyes.

In her imagination, she sheathes her blade and tosses herself back into the depths to drown forevermore, penance for her wrongful rage.

In reality, she falls to her knees to press her own lithe fingers to Andromache’s wound, pleading with all the gods she knows to let her live, _please._

She can’t lose her.

Andromache’s pale and trembling fingers weakly encircle her wrist as Quynh presses down on tender, beautiful, destroyed flesh. When Quynh turns to take in her lost love’s face, she sees Andromache pale as the moon, her eyes twinkling like stars. She wants to look away, to say something, to plead, to cry, to scream, to reassure, to apologize, to save, to love, to need, but she cannot. Everything fails her. The love of her life is going to die. And Quynh killed her.

What she would not give for a dose of immortality in this moment. What she would not do to take whatever helped her survive for centuries underwater and give it to Andromache. What she would not do to turn her lost warrior love into a new moon goddess, just like the last, pale and dark, separated from her lover but health and hale for eternity. She is an archer too, just like the husband in the story her mother whispered in her ear ages ago, surely the gods would laugh at the similarities between them and the myth of old, perhaps with enough humor to grant her impossible wish. _Just a dose of immortality_ , she thinks, as the lack of hope becomes undeniable and footsteps thud behind her and around her, _one last bit of life, she doesn't need much, please, just let her live and survive this, I would give anything_ -

Andromache whispers, hoarse against impending death, life spanning thousands of years spilling out onto Quynh’s hands and coat and shoes, “I love you.”

 _No, not like this, you can't leave me. I love_ -

Quynh remembers the taste of tears, salty and true.

With a jolt, she is forced from her memory by penetrating green eyes that puncture the choking darkness of the water around her. She rises from the depths, pulled to the surface by the glimmer of those star-like eyes. When Quynh breaks through, she feels lost. She tries to moor herself by breathing, tasting, hearing, centering. It trickles back in, bit by bit. Gradually, those deep green eyes come into focus. They come with soft black hair and a grief ridden frown. Quynh looks away, recoiling from the haunted emotion.

However, she regrets it immediately, because she once more catches the line of a certain thin white scar at the juncture of Andromache’s neck and shoulder that disappears under her collar. It dips with every swallow, stretches with every toss of her head, and shivers with every breath. 

A symbol of Quynh’s rage and Andromache’s mortality. Ever present. Ever real. Evermore.

Quynh blinks, only for the world to swim again as she batters her hands bloody and loses her nails once again against cold iron.

Her fingers dig into her jeans; she cannot wait to land.

....

When they leave the airport in Saigon, it smells like someone lit a match to wet trash. Underneath that slick smell, there is the rough exhale of exhaust, which grates on Quynh with its unfamiliarity. 

When she had been cast asunder, the bite of the modern age was still tender new. Now, she disembarks into a land bustling with modernity. Her senses are full of it, and it jars her. The Vietnam of her youth had its cities, but it was quieter, slower.

Here, the scars of colonialism have opened wide the city. Motorbikes race along the streets close enough to clip noses, Western tourists mingle around confused, and English and French war with Vietnamese on street signs. Sometimes, she hears dialects of her mother tongue she only half understands. The flag, red with a great golden star, flies everywhere; she has no attachment to it. These are not the things of her youth. They do not quite belong to her.

And yet, as she and the team meld into the crowd, she does see things that remind her of what she once knew home to be. The street vendors still hawk their wares, spun sugar candy and sticky meat skewers. Uncles bicker over coffee outside cafes, just like they used to banter over tea in her village in the smooth twilight. Children bob and weave through the crowd and stop to play games in tight alleyways, something Quynh remembers her siblings doing (what they looked like has been lost to time, but she recalls perfectly the twinkle of her brother's laugh and the sweet smell of her sister's hair). These things are a small comfort as she wanders streets forever changed by events she never saw.

They pass a temple near a pond on the way to their safehouse nestled in Saigon's busy streets. It is hidden and peaceful, long away from the rumble of modern life, but plenty of people mill around, laying gifts and whispering prayers. Quynh could almost close her eyes and pretend it was the Vietnam she used to know, despite the new (to her at least) Buddhist influences. 

Tucked inside an alcove is a shrine to the god of death, thick with incense and offerings for the dead. The momentary peace she finds as she gazes at silent mourners turns sour as she remembers that the god of the death is also of the sea. The pond, at first so serene, wells up and screams in response. The depths pull and pull and she feels death at her throat as she drowns _again_. Quynh can’t look away, until, “We have to keep moving.”

Andromache is leaning into view, black hair draped over her brow. Quynh counts the new, mortal creases between Andromache’s eyebrows to come back to herself, “I’m coming.”

They trade half smiles and move on their way, the shrine of death and murky depths left behind. 

....

Their target is a French venture capitalist whose import/export is more extensive than he lets on. Alongside boxes of chewing gum and machine stitched shirts, there are women and children in chains, locked in storage crates to be sold. The Frenchman traffics in desperation and _people_.

Quynh hates him already.

The police can’t touch him; he's too powerful, he's bought off too many of them, he's a fixture of the business scene. But they, this team, this family, can make him bleed. So they sit in an old-style Saigon house and wait for the right opportunity.

It doesn't come for a while. They each deal with the ensuing boredom of a longer than expected stakeout differently. 

Quynh herself shifts about nervously, similar to Booker, who obviously itches with the need to drink (he hasn't been, lately. Not since he threw his whiskey into the burning drum). Sometimes, to distract themselves, they play chess in the tiled, open living room at the base of the house. 

They can just about see Joe out in the back courtyard as they do. He spends a lot of time there, lingering by the little pond set up in the corner. They have come during the summer monsoon season, so perhaps he worries that the place will flood. Quynh moves her knight to take Booker's rook and tries not to think about it.

Nile sits nearby, practicing phrases in their multitude of languages and working on her embroidery, dark fingers weaving together a thousand tales. Occasionally, she pricks her finger and her recitation falters. Nile pauses to watch the blood never fall on her work; it has already healed by immortality’s kiss. In that moment, her face is disturbingly placid, like a too-still lake surface. But she always returns to her work eventually, soft voice humming through the air.

Nicky becomes obsessed with a vendor just down the road who sells _bánh mì_ with a special chili sauce that he swears is the height of magnificence. Every time he comes in from shadowing their target, he grabs a sandwich. Eventually, he starts getting one for Andromache too as she sits and plans their attack. She’s more a fan of the mayonnaise in it, Quynh can tell. She licks it off her fingers and always looks like she wants to ask for more when it’s over, something that evokes mental images from a very long time ago. 

Quynh blushes and looks away to catch Booker as he tries to check her. She rewards him with a crippling strike at his queen. They trade glances, and he lowers his king. Victory.

“It’s time,” Nicky says.

Andromache hands Quynh her sword. Quynh gives Andromache a bulletproof vest. Forest green eyes shine with irritation. Quynh is unmoved; she is not some simple pawn. Andromache caves, taking the proffered kevlar. Their fingers catch in the motion, a whisper of a caress. 

No, she is not a pawn at all.

....

They set the board. 

Nicky watches from his perch in the opposite skyscraper like a knight lying in wait for the errant attack. Joe similarly waits for them to clear the path before sweeping through. Nile is the bishop; she cuts across their target's defenses as she sneaks in alone, shutting off cameras and tripwire as she goes. Booker, Quynh, and Andromache begin the opening gambit. If they do this right, the Frenchman will not know he is playing until he is about to lose.

Nile does her job well. They move through the halls largely undetected. Then, they come upon a lone guard in a hallway. It shouldn't be a problem, but he turns around just as they turn the corner. He raises his gun to get a shot off, but Booker is fast; he raises his silenced gun to cut the man short. An unexpected, _slightly_ subdued boom rings through the hall as the lone guard falls. Booker flinches from the sound of his barely quieted gun before cussing out, “ _Merde!_ ” 

They have lost the element of surprise. Footsteps scuttle ahead and above. Booker switches to his submachine gun (after throwing away the shitty silencer, cursing the maker's name all the while) and swivels to face the oncoming parade of men, “Shit!” 

The rook takes the bishop, but the pawns take note. 

Andromache takes cover and calls out for Nicky's support. Then she looks to Quynh, who twirls her sword as she nods at a hidden vent. Andromache smirks and her forest green eyes swirl enticingly. _So it's to be Plan B then._

Quynh grins with an almost feral quality as Andromache lifts her up and through the grate. Gunfire fills the hall; Quynh almost wants to turn around and protect her team, but Andromache calls out in the bright, old tongue of her people (that only she and Quynh speak now; its syllables have been lost to time, but they never forget, especially when it is linked to memories of them laying together and whispering the words, limbs long and stated in safety), “Be quick, will you?”

Quynh scuttles through the vents, trying to recall the blueprints Andromache showed her. The air rushes through, the humidity outside pressing in past the layer of air conditioning. She searches for the right grate, Andromache’s directions ringing in her head. She clings to the smooth, sweet tenor inside of her mind as much as her fingers cling to the metal and- there! 

She huffs a breath and kicks open the grate, clambering down atop one guard. She twists to strike at another one, her sword deadly accurate. Blood splatters and she unstraps his gun as he crumples, swivelling on her heel to aim at the guard to the left. She recalls Nile's advice as they practiced at a nameless safehouse, “Flick off the safety, aim, exhale, squeeze the trigger. Be sure.”

She _is_ sure. The guard falls in a hail of red and the gun kicks back in her hand. She ducks and fires at the last sentry. Now, there is only one other person in the room. She keeps her gun trained on his brow. 

Outside, it begins to rain. The monsoon clatters against the floor length windows. The Frenchman wears a snide smile.

Quynh lifts her chin, appraising, “You are _le Roi_?”

He clicks his tongue, standing from his glass desk. He watches her carefully as he walks around the edge. The room echoes with the sounds of gunfire and death outside. The Frenchman dips his head and spreads his hands out in a cocksure way, “I am the King, yes.”

The queen advances, her gun amazingly still. Check.

“So why have you come? Is it money you want? Access? A share of the business?”

Quynh narrows her eyes, “We’ve come to stop you.”

He huffs a laugh, “Oh, just that? Simple enough.”

His face pinches into a considerate look, “But you haven't killed me yet, so you need something.”

It is not a question. Quynh sucks her teeth.

“Yes,” she pauses to exhale, “tell me where the last shipment is.”

“Ah. You don't know where they are, so you can't kill me yet.”

He takes a step forward, “But there's a problem. I won't tell you, not even if it kills me.”

The king sacrifices his knight to move the whole game.

The queen is on unsteady ground, “And why is that?”

He reeks of condescension, “Because this is about more than a payday. It's about principle.”

Quynh's body roils with heat, “What principle is that? Is it one of kidnapping and misery? All you do is destroy people.”

 _Le Roi_ ’s voice booms over the rising monsoon, “It is the principle of betterment! These people are nothing. The poor, the destitute, the weak, they’re useless. All they do is drag on society, causing an unnecessary burden. I remove them, for the good of all. Vietnam needs someone to cleanse it, to show it the way. It's incapable, so I do what I must. I do what is necessary, for the betterment of everyone.”

Silence fills the room, punctured only by the storm outside and the gunfire beyond the door. Quynh has stopped breathing.

“ _Đụ má mày_. You godless motherfucker.”

The Frenchman's nose wrinkles in a sneer, “But what do you know? You’re just a Viet whore!”

Quynh explodes, bursting through the line of pawns around _le Roi_. She harshly pistol whips his temple as rage wells up inside her, fervently watered by indignation and disgust at this man. She throws away her weapons so she can peel this man apart with her fists. He falls under her assault, moaning and begging in French. She punctuates each splitting of flesh with harsh, quick Vietnamese, “ _Đụ má mày đồ con quần què đĩ lôn!_ ”

If she doesn't stop soon, she’ll kill him, but she cannot muster up anything close to mercy right now, “Fuck off, you useless son of a bitch!”

But then, calloused, thin hands pull her away; she fights against their grip before that lovely, ancient language of softness and security is whispered right at the shell of her ear, “We’ve got him. It’s okay. Calm down. Breathe. Stay with me.”

Quynh stops her struggle to heave in air, fighting to see and feel past the water inside her. Rage makes her tingle and she cannot focus, no matter how much Andromache's voice soothes her.

A face swims into view as her breath stutters, this one with a long, stately nose and green-grey eyes. She feels her split knuckles slowly heal as she takes in Nicky's half-sad smile and feels the faint touch of his strong fingers around her own. As much as she wants to lean into the comfort, it is too much, too fast. She flinches and the hands around her fall away, both Andromache's and Nicky's. 

She stands, trying to come back to herself. Breathe, taste, hear, center. The mantra clears her head. 

Eventually, she turns her head to meet Nicky's wide eyes. She tries to communicate an apology without having to muster the words, and judging by Nicky's accepting eyes, he understands. He dips his head teasingly and murmurs in quiet Latin syllables, “ _Sola non capit regem regina_.”

She smiles, half-hearted yet there. Nicky returns it, but his is brighter and freer, “A queen does not take a king alone.”

A shout rings through the room. They all turn to see Nile standing over _le Roi_ , formidable and threatening, ever the marine, even as her arm drips blood from a rapidly healing bullet wound. Her face is hard and smooth like a statue, supported by a jaw tightening in rising defiance. Beside her, Joe crouches, his own face steely as he whispers in the Frenchman’s ear. _Le Roi_ weeps blood and tears as he pushes out choked off sentences. Joe then rises to speak with Booker, who sits at _le Ro_ _i_ ’s desk before his laptop. They exchange words; in a moment, Booker waves the three of them over, calling out as they come closer, “Boss, we know where the shipment is. It’s at the docks, about to depart.”

Andromache speaks with a rough voice that makes Quynh ache to reach out and wipe away her cares, “Tell the police where it is. We’re getting out of here.”

Joe wanders back to the Frenchman’s bloody, prone form and kicks his foot, “What should we do with him, huh?”

The question is obviously for Andromache, who takes a moment to look around at the team. Nile has moved away from _le Roi_ ; she now lingers before the giant windows, her bullet wound gone but her defiance ever present. She and Andromache share a heavy look before Nile turns back to watch the monsoon rage. Booker shifts from side to side where he now stands next to Nicky. Both of them wear pinched looks, obviously vibrating with disgust. Andromache takes them in before she glances at Joe who stares down at their target with judgment in his eyes. He gives her a short nod. 

Andromache surveys them all before bending down to pick up the gun Quynh had cast aside in her blistering anger. Then, she turns to Quynh and holds out the firearm.

The act surprises Quynh; she thought after ripping into the Frenchman and nearly losing the shipment in the process that they would not trust her. But as she peers into Andromache's forest green eyes and finds nothing but steady trust, she realizes that Andromache wants her to finish this on her terms.

She takes the gun. Checks the safety, aims, exhales, listens to the rain.

His skin is so bloody. She did that, hands red and raging.

He cannot stand, much less fight back. If she kills him, she will be harming someone who is defenseless.

His face, for a second, is the same as that first face out of the water, bewildered and afraid.

Before, she would not have hesitated, but now, after everything, after getting her family back and trying to relearn emotions past revenge, she’s trying to see the whole board. 

Andromache shifts next to her, and Quynh catches her smell, smoky and sweet all at once. She huffs a breath, ever accompanied by the shifting of water inside of her. 

The gun quivers for a half second before she lowers it. 

She moves to leave, as does her family. Before they make it very far, she hears, past the gurgle of blood and patter of raindrops, “They’ll still be worthless.”

Quynh turns around, cool as glass as she takes in _le Roi_ struggling to stand. She moves back into his view, passing Nicky as his hand rests on the pommel of his sword and Joe as he cracks his knuckles. This Frenchman is not one for self-preservation, obviously.

She settles in front of him, mirroring their positions at the beginning. He spits out a gob of blood, “I’m not wrong.”

“You are about one thing for sure,” Quynh says as her body hangs on a precipice, tense with barely restrained anger. 

“What’s that?”

She takes in his long face, split apart by her rampage. In her mind, she contemplates his cruelty and ponders the essence of mercy, but what she says is this, “You are no king.”

She shoots him just under his ribs on the left side. She knows that’s where his spleen is (a thousand years of dying is her teacher), and he can survive without it if she hit it just right. But he doesn’t know that, so he howls and screams, “You’ve killed me!”

It’s a fifty-fifty chance. It’s all she’s willing to offer. 

She throws the gun across the room, its bullets spent. The team walks away, rooks, queens, knights, and all.

Checkmate.

....

It was a victory.

But it doesn't feel like one, not to Quynh.

They get back to the safehouse in groups, trying to throw any interested parties off their scent.

Quynh and Nile are in the first group back. Nile takes the opportunity to have a shower while Quynh slips out of her shoes to make _cao lầu_ , broth bubbling and noodles boiling. The motions of cooking keep her mind off the recoil of the gun in her hand.

From her perch in the kitchen, which is tucked into a corner of the main room on the ground floor, she watches Joe and Nicky wander in. They breathlessly laugh and nuzzle each other. Nicky goes to wash up, but Joe stays behind to help her cook for a while. They kiss sweetly, unendingly before they part, and Quynh’s heart pulls itself apart, just a bit. Together she and Joe spoon noodles atop a bed of greens and bean sprouts, pork arranged on top just so. As they finish, Booker and Andromache come in as well.

Although he looks a little wearied, Booker is all smiles. He picks up the king piece from the chess board and tosses it into the air before throwing it to Joe, who catches it with a chuckle. Together, they head upstairs with their meals in hand to eat at the large, twisted wood table on the second floor.

Andromache smiles at it all in her usual enigmatic way before handing Quynh a cup of _ca phê trung_ she picked up on her way back. Quynh accepts it, her hands warmed by the coffee, but she can barely relish in the feeling before Andromache is leaning in, almost out of habit. She stops herself just before her pink, soft lips meet Quynh's high cheekbone, and blinks. 

Quynh herself has gone deathly still, her body strung between wanting and running. She’s afraid that she’ll drop the coffee if Andromache dares to breathe a second more so close to her. The rain lessens its roar outside until it’s just a few droplets here and there. As they wait in each other’s space, the monsoon holds its breath too.

Thankfully (or maybe not), Andromache ducks back out of the motion, and presses her lips together in a thin line, eons away from her earlier ecstatic smile. She turns to go up the stairs, and while Quynh knows Andromache never runs from anything, she fled quite fast from the almost promise of Quynh's skin.

Quynh stands there, hypnotized, maybe even traumatized, before Nile comes down the stairs. 

Then, she turns away, and settles herself heavily in an old wooden chair near a window. She reaches up a hand to catch a tear before it even has a chance to fall. She takes in the wetness on her fingertip as it sparkles in the oncoming night. The moon rises, its face pockmarked and pale. Stars peek out from between the clouds, brightly knowledgeable. She glances down at the chess set missing a king before her and wonders if she should take the queen too.

Nile goes toward the kitchen, but stops. Her strong hands conjure themselves into fists and she moves, slowly, quietly, like an ageless river, to stand at the window beside Quynh. 

There they stay, taking in each other's presence. There are no words between them. The quiet merely sits. Quynh feels a smile tug at the corner of her lips; only one other person in her life ever knew how to make silence speak so well. 

Forest green eyes flash in the darkness punctured by moonlight that surrounds them. Nile shifts to rub at her forearm where the bullet had pierced it earlier. Quynh has been deathless for so long, she has nearly forgotten how much it hurts, especially at the beginning. The phantom pains, the lack of scars, the absence of time, they are all you can think about. 

Nile glances down at her hands, smooth and free of wrinkles for eons still, and says, “I remember going to Disney World when I was a kid. My brother and I, we went to ride Space Mountain. We sat down in the little cart and then my lungs lit on fire as we were launched forward in the ride, into the dark. We were going so fast and I could see nothing but this blackness... spilled out before me. It was littered with bright white stars, and they looked like the twinkle of someone's eye. It was like someone was helping me to fly, to touch the sky. That’s when I really wanted to believe that there was something more to life, that maybe God was real, because I was just one girl sitting on a Disney ride, but in that moment I could really fly. When it was all over and we came to a stop, it was like I had learned how to breathe differently. Everything felt different.”

She lifts her sparkling eyes to meet Quynh’s, “I don’t know what it was like for you, coming out of the water. But I imagine it was a little like that. Like everything, all of the sudden, but also after an eternity, was... different. And so, you are different. But that’s okay.”

Nile turns again, this time with a smile as she stares out at the inky blackness of the night. She reaches up to trace her fingers along the window, almost like she was imagining someone’s face, “It’s how we learn, right? By being different.”

Quynh realizes that Nile learned one of the hardest lessons life ever teaches you without the benefit of a thousand years’ learning. She had known since she was a little girl. No wonder she was so wise.

Quynh lifts her fingers, ignoring the memories of nails burying themselves in metal, to caress the smooth skin of Nile’s hand. She presses one fingertip, then two, then the whole of her palm. She sings with the human touch of it all, but her body is also ready to bolt the second Nile even moves a muscle.

But she does not. Of course not. Not Nile.

Instead, they just look out the window together at the blackness littered with stars that twinkle.

....

After a while, the two of them go up the stairs to find the others engaged in a full victory celebration. 

Nicky appears in a second to take Nile’s hand and whisk her off to dance, some jazz record playing somewhere in the room. 

Joe laughs from his perch atop a red, wrought wood table. One foot rests on an old chair and he taps it in time to the beat while calling out inane poetry to Nicky as he spins Nile in a dance with no name. Nile, to her credit, takes to their adventure without planned steps or method very well. Andromache nurses a glass of red wine, her cheeks temptingly rosy in the soft candlelight as she cheers the two on. At the other end of the table, Booker has his face buried in a bowl of noodles, but when he finally emerges, he looks full and pleased. He laughs along with Joe, and then starts to sing some nameless French song that just barely matches the melody of the jazz weaving through the room.

It is happy, safe, _warm_.

But as Quynh settles herself at the table in her own old chair, she feels unease which picks apart her throat. 

She cannot rest. She watches Nile and Nicky spin, and can only imagine a ship rocking in and out of the sea while at dock. She listens to Booker sing, and can only hear his cries of pain as the torture doesn’t end. She hears the tap of Joe’s foot against the wooden chair, and she can only hear the harsh slap of his feet as he runs for help. She takes in the sweetness of Andromache's pink lips, and can only imagine them blue and lifeless.

She looks away from it all to instead ponder the twisted burnt orange red wood of the table. But the color is too red, almost bloody; it tries to tear her back into the past, so she shoves her chair away from it. The conversation and laughter and happiness and singing dies as the team all suddenly look at her. The jazz still warbles in the corner, but it ricochets between the walls, no longer joyful. She cannot stand their eyes, their haunting, their memory. She mumbles something in some language about going outside before bolting away.

She runs down the stairs to the back courtyard, everything tight and hot around her. There, amongst the flowers drooping in the monsoon's humid tide, Quynh gasps in lungfuls of air. She can still feel water inside of her somewhere. She still can’t get it out. The sea is with her, always.

And then the heavens unleash, bringing the sea to her. Rain pelts down once again. The daily storm turns everything to mud. It comes down on her too, the monsoon still as relentless as ever, but she can’t move. 

She simply stands there, dimly remembering her home as a girl and how it flooded once, her family’s lives bobbing along the surface of the rainwater. She had panicked, young and fearful as she was then, but her mother said it would all dry eventually, they just had to hold on and wait for the rain to die. That didn’t stop her mother from yelling when she found her favorite pot full of mud and leaves; her voice was biting as she cursed her luck, “ _Trời ơi!_ ”

Quynh manages a half smile at the recollection, faint as it is (she decidedly ignores how her thoughts want to drag up her banishment and the pinched look on her mother's face. Going there never ends well). Against the oppressive humidity, she is glad to find any refuge. It feels like pressure weighing down on her, a little too similar to how she felt crushed on the ocean floor. She curses to herself under her breath at the bite of memory, just like her mother an eon ago, “For the love of god!”

The humid pressure wells around Quynh as her mind spins in circles. Thoughts with no end or beginning twirl through her head, interlocking like patterns on homemade ma'amoul and ravaging like white yellow fire in a tin drum. Rainwater collects in her mouth as she turns it up towards the sky, her skin cooling with every brush of frigid storm air. She suppresses her chill and the motion locks up her spine. Suddenly, with her bones rigid and fingers wet, Quynh feels a cold that spreads from within her. The tide of memory crashes against the shore of her waking mind, and she feels the familiar pull asunder. When she turns her head to try to escape, instead she feels herself fall to her knees in the mud. But then, it’s not mud. It’s deckplate. Her hands are still wet, but now with red liquid, not clear rain. Her fingers press not into muddy ground, but against the pale, torn skin of a neck slashed just at its base, near the slope of a shoulder.

“ _Don’t touch her!_ ”

Quynh lurches her hand away from Andromache’s wound, fingers coated in too thick blood, “What-”

Booker stomps into view, eyes wild and face sweaty, “You can’t put pressure on her neck, it’ll make it worse. We have to go now, Andy needs the hospital as soon as possible.”

They rush to the car, Nile slicing apart Quynh’s remaining hired goons, her dark skin shifting under the rapidly fading sunlight. Nicky is rushing down the dock towards them, his pupils blown wild and his body humming with fear. He takes some of Andromache’s weight when he reaches them. When they reach the car, Quynh catches sight of Joe in the front seat, fingers drumming on the steering wheel. 

They lift Andromache into the backseat carefully. When they finish, Nicky and Booker stand, unmoving. Quynh feels confusion fight past the shock inhabiting all of her senses, so she looks up to catch a heavy stare between the two that ends a half second later. Booker turns to her, “Get in the car.”

Quynh hesitates, wondering why they would let her, how they will follow, if she should even comply. The waves loll behind her, the depths ever singing to her, but she makes up her mind. She slides into the passenger seat. Andromache sighs behind her, eyes rapidly unfocusing and face paling even more.

 _Like the moon_ , Quynh thinks as they peel away from that horrible boat and towards the nearest hospital, _maybe you’ll get your wish. She’ll die and be reborn as the moon goddess after all, this time the steward of death, not eternal life. And it will be you that did it-_

She reaches away from her thoughts to grasp at Andromache’s wrist so she can feel her pulse. It’s much too slow, but it’s still there. Beside her, Joe drives with a laser focus.

They drive and drive and Quynh keeps time with Andromache’s heartbeat and then they arrive. Joe pulls into the emergency bay, throws the car into park, and races inside to find some doctors and nurses. He’ll likely have them out here faster than humanly possible, so Quynh prepares herself. She traces Andromache’s knuckles with her fingers before getting out of the car and opening the back door.

Sure enough, they race out, nurses carefully pulling Andromache out (her hair was so matted and crusty with blood; it was so soft, it was always so soft, would it ever be again, Quynh didn’t know, she didn’t know anything). There is a flurry of machines and talking and poking and white gauze and running and then Quynh can’t follow, they say she has to wait, Joe, he has to wait too, they’ll come to get them.

Joe fights back against the order, staring down at a short nurse who is unimpressed and insistent that “We will do our jobs sir, now sit down so that we actually can, yelling gets us nowhere.”

Finally, Joe gives up, his shoulders falling as he pulls on his curls, harshly highlighted under the fluorescent lights. He turns away and heaves himself into a chair, face in his hands. 

For Quynh, the world is still swimming. She knows she is in shock, but she can't leave it. All she sees, over and over, is Andromache.

Her laughing. Her loving. Her sharpening her axe while sitting by a campfire. Her groaning in the early morning light as she lays wrapped around Quynh. Her searching for the best baklava. Her crying when they lose and it costs something terrible. Her screaming as Quynh was wrenched away from her and shoved into an iron cage. Her finding the will to always go on. Her fighting for what’s good and smiling when the world gets just a little brighter. 

She knows, somewhere in her mind, that they sit her down. She knows that they take off her coat, red from dye and from Andromache’s nearly lost life. She knows that they wrap her in a blanket. She knows she should say thank you, should _think_ , yet there’s still nothing but Andromache. She was so pale, like the moon. Her blood was so red, which should mean she’s lucky, it’s an auspicious color, a holy one, but Quynh can’t think of any blessings right now, especially when she looks down at her fingers, sticky with red drying blood.

She realizes, as she watches her fingers slowly move under the fluorescent light that her hand pressing against Andromache's gaping neck and then her waning pulse were the first times she had touched someone without trying to kill them in centuries. 

Her red coat will never come clean. Maybe her hands won’t either.

Quynh is cold and wet and so very alone.

When she lifts her eyes, she is not staring at the harsh lights of a hospital lobby, but the glistening gaze of stars above. Rain has soaked her to the bone, freezing her soul, but humidity still presses all around her.

 _The stars_ , she thinks, _mother always said they were the eyes of the ancestors staring down, clear and true_. Nile’s voice comes through, speaking of how it felt to fly in a mountain of space, how the stars twinkled like eyes.

She shrinks from the attention, fear nestled right up against her long ignored guilt. Her own eyes burn, a victim of the constant feeling that she cannot breathe, that she’s still drowning in the depths. She prickles with the need for oxygen, but it never comes, she needs to run and _find_ it. 

She pulls her yellow coat off and leaves it in the mud, knees and feet slipping with the need to get out. She throws herself through the courtyard entrance, racing through the darkened living room, and finally into the open space on the other side, feet wetly slapping against tile. She spies the door out and breaks for it, heaving as she goes. She bursts through, free of her cage once again. Around her, all is water. Memories shift in the puddles, the sheets of rain, the little rivers collecting along the edge. She cannot tell where what is and what was begin. 

In a puddle beside a car wheel on the street, she sees Booker with a bloody lip, tied up and bristling under her gaze. The ship tossed from side to side on the waves, ever reminding Quynh of her purpose, her need, her rage. Booker will soon heal from his newest injuries; the ones Quynh carries will never heal, so she must exact a price. She wants him to help her find the others; in return, she’ll tell her friend with thick fists to walk away. He spits, “I’ve already betrayed them once. I will not do it again.”

Then, the sheet of rain to her left twists into the faint outline of Nile, her eyes bright. She is trying to teach Quynh how to shoot an array of guns (they were huge, hulking things when Quynh was sealed away. Now, they have multiplied into many kinds of murder). The others are too hesitant or too afraid to stand so close to her violence after what Quynh did. She understands. She waits for their understanding in return. Nile was quick to forgive, however. She flicks the safety off on an assault rifle, ever the marine, “Never point this at someone unless you’re ready to never see them again. There’s no going back from here.”

She runs and runs from the words swirling through the water, but they catch her. In a river of rain rushing down the alleyway she just turned into, she sees Nicky, hair just above his chin, tanned blond by the desert sun. He shifts in his chainmail, his hand ever on the pommel of his sword. When Quynh first met him, he was so quiet and acquiescent that she barely could believe he was once a raging crusader. Now, having seen him protect Joe with frightening ferocity, she has no trouble picturing it. Nicky watches Joe at his midday prayers with a haunted look, “You would be surprised how much you can do if you forego mercy.”

Just as Nicky’s face fades, Joe’s comes to life, animated by the same rushing water. He is cloaked in a dark doublet and dusty trousers. Together, they stand and watch the years-long construction of Il Duomo continue. Their bet about when it will finish has lasted for a hundred years with no end in sight, and they laugh as work on the dome finally begins. Joe, handsome in the sunset, surveys Florence bustling around them. He grins and tugs on the braid that Andromache had woven into her hair just that morning, “I guess it takes some time for great things to finally meet their end, hm?”

Quynh tears off into another winding alleyway, the rain pouring down even stronger. She knows, in the back of her mind, that she cannot hope to outrun the sky or the stars that watch her, but she can try. When she wraps tight around a corner and comes face to face with Andromache in an overflowing pond, she wishes she could outrun this too. Regret and guilt war to crush her throat as memory swirls in ripples of time and rainwater. Andromache lays in a hospital bed. Pale and lovely and timeless, a weak smile spreads across her face. She reaches out to a quivering Quynh with tired fingers, “Come home.”

Quynh’s breath stutters as Andromache’s voice abates. _Where, where_ , she thinks. There is nowhere. This isn’t the home of her childhood, this isn’t the country she knew, it is all different and Quynh suddenly feels a howling grief inside of her that sounds like the sea currents tossing above her and the snide voice of the Frenchman taunting her and the stilted gasps of Andromache as she tried to fight mortality. 

It all presses in and Quynh wants to collapse in on herself, but then she sees a yellow flower, a _hoa quỳnh hương_ , bobbing in the water before her. The color spikes through her brain, clearing the fog of emotion. Raindrops softly cling to its petals. Slowly, more flowers come into view. They bob in the pond, which is suddenly still. It has stopped raining.

Wet and shivering, she raises her eyes from the trail of _quỳnh_ flowers to the serene and smiling face of a white statue. A woman stands amidst all the water, one hand clasping a downturned vase, a wreath of _quỳnh_ flowers collected at her feet. Calm radiates around her, like she had stopped the monsoon with barely a thought.

This is _Quan Âm,_ Quynh realizes with a shift of her head, the drowned and reborn goddess of mercy. Mistress of inscrutable depths, framed by the pond’s serenity, who rides a dragon and skates the sea. 

Long ago, when her father’s death was still bitter in Quynh’s mouth and loss hollowed out her family, her mother had marched them all out through the rice paddies to the next town over where there was a temple to _Quan Âm_. They had brought blooming red chrysanthemums and juicy oranges as well as a picking of _quỳnh_ flowers to ask for a blessing amidst all their struggles. Quynh had held the bright yellow blossoms in her hands, the sight still tender with the memory of her father. She had laid them at _Quan Âm_ ’s feet, trying to find something akin to peace once again.

Now, eons later, she does the same. She bends to pray in a way she has not done since she was cast out from her village, labeled an unearthly creature. If anyone would understand, it would be _Quan Âm_. For who knows the depths better? Who knows the cost of water and need for breath more? Who could show Quynh the path past all her rage and regret into mercy besides she? 

The flowers twirl on the pond surface. Fog rolls in at _Quan Âm_ ’s feet. The clouds break apart to let the stars shine through. All is still. All is calm. All is good.

Quynh takes a breath.

No water shifts in her lungs.

She gazes up at _Quan Âm_ ’s quiet face, and smiles.

....

She can’t go back to the safehouse. Not yet. Everything is still too raw and real.

Instead, she wanders the muddy streets, listening to faint sounds of life in darkened Saigon. Down one street, the distant rumble of laughter pulls her in. She walks past parked motorcycles and beat up old cars before coming upon a bar. 

At least, she _thinks_ it’s a bar. It looks like a storefront at first, but when she enters, she sees heaps of alcohol amidst a mass of patrons. The place is rundown and cramped. The floors are made of cardboard and they are stained black by oil. One fan spins in the corner, likely about to fall apart. A few plastic stools are open at the bar on the other side of the room from a TV which commands everyone’s attention. She makes her way to them, doing her best to brush the mud and rain off herself (it’s an attempt in vain for the most part). 

When she settles down to watch the commotion around her with interest, a man, presumably the bartender, comes up to her. Quynh notices his sweaty upper lip and patchy stubble as he greets her. She slaps a wad of waterlogged cash in front of him and speaks in lilting Vietnamese, “Give me something good.”

He muddles around behind the bar for a bit before he hands over an amber, frothy drink and says, “Henny and 7-up. You’ll like it. Try a bit!”

She looks at him dubiously, then shrugs and kicks it back in one. It burns a hole through her tongue before bubbling along the roof of her mouth. She _does_ like it. Something about it is grounding. The taste is also just the right kind of horrifying.

The bartender pours her another, which she also sips on, but the moment is cut short when the room bursts with sounds that rush towards her. More people bustle their way into the bar so they can look at the television and drink, but when Quynh turns to look, the undercurrent of sound and laughter and life surrounding her shifts to silence.

At first, she thinks that it is once again a memory of her time dying in the depths, so she clings to the serenity of _Quan Âm_ ’s quiet face, but it’s not that. It’s something else.

Because there is a sound. It’s the quiet beep of a heart monitor. 

When she looks around, she sees that the walls and floors have changed to a clean white. There is no drink in her hand, there are no people clustered on the other side of the room, there is no smell of burnt exhaust, it’s just silence. Her hair is not thick with water and no mud sits in the bed of her fingernails. A lone tear rolls down her cheek.

Quynh sits, not on a cracked plastic stool, but on the edge of a hospital bed.

Next to her hand is another’s. When the beautiful, thin, calloused fingers of that other hand reach out for hers, she inches her hand away. It’s too much, it’s too red, she’s still too full of rage. 

Quynh inches her eyes up to meet not the shimmering eyes of bar patrons or the stars of the ancestors, but forest green eyes that promise truth without expectation. 

She breaks, just a little, deep down inside, as Andromache’s eyes birth an eternity greater than any they’ve ever lived.

A white bandage covers half her neck, and Quynh shrinks from the sight. Then, lovely, cracked lips part to hoarsely whisper, “What do you want?”

The silence roars. Quynh tries to speak, but she just chokes on something heavy in her throat, like she swallowed a bunch of flowers. It's fragrant and thick and biting and seething, but she fights past all of it to quietly say, “I want to fight for you, for the team, for…”

Quynh pauses to watch the sunset streak red across the sky like a painter’s brush with no cares. She rises past everything swirling inside her to say, “For my family.”

When Quynh looks back to Andromache, she sees a cosmos of emotion. She cannot name everything there, but what she sees at the heart of it is love. Like it’s the root of everything, the air between them and the cosmos swirling above them and the simple space caught between the hum of each other's skin. The need to weep stirs inside her, but the need to trade hesitant smiles is stronger.

Everything glimmers as they relearn the sight of each other’s joy and safety, but the moment cracks when the door parts and Booker steps through.

Andromache’s smile fades to a thoughtful frown; she opens her mouth to speak, “Quynh is with us.”

Booker explodes, a cavalcade of French and English indignation raining down upon their heads. Quynh turns from the roar, subsumed in her own guilt, to trace the red spilling out across the sky outside the window. The glass is smudged by her fingers, and if she closes her eyes, she could just about imagine she was touching someone’s face, cool and true. But she is also consumed by the memory of sea glass and no sky and choking depths when she closes her eyes, so she keeps them open, and listens to Booker and Andromache argue.

Then, it all stutters to a stop. The room rings with the absence of sound, so Quynh turns from the window to look. 

On the bed, Andromache presses Booker’s forehead to hers. The moment is raw and intimate; it nearly kills Quynh with its intensity. The feeling only swells when Andromache whispers, so softly, “We are not angels of death, Booker. We can give out second chances.”

Quynh blinks. When her eyelids open again, there is no hospital room, but the cardboard floors of a beaten up Saigon bar. She cradles a glass in her hand, empty of its alcohol but still cool and true.

The room explodes with sound, even greater than before. It’s a rush of shouting that she at first likens to Booker’s outburst, so she leans away in guilt, but then she realizes it’s something very different. A man kneels on the ground in prayer, calling out _Quan Âm_ ’s name; red flags with golden stars flutter above people’s heads; young boys jostle each other in front of a television where some game is playing on a wide green field. Her face pinches in confusion.

Then, a voice next to her ear, “You’ll want to be careful. They’re about to go _đi bảo_.”

She turns her head to see the bartender from earlier standing there, his lip still sweaty, “What’s that?”

He looks a little taken aback at the question, but answers nonetheless, “‘The oncoming storm.’ It’s for the soccer match; Vietnam is playing and they’ll riot when it’s over.”

Her eyes widen and she opens her mouth to respond, but then it begins. A crashing wave of yelling and waving limbs rushes through the crowd and into the street outside with Quynh caught in the middle. She can’t see the TV anymore; there are too many bodies shouting and jumping and dancing and crying. Many more flags produce themselves and arc through the air. People begin to run in and out, alcohol gripped in their hands, their faces joyful.

It _is_ a storm. Everything is loud and the energy of pure glee sucks everything in. There is a hail of pounding feet; it rains not with the monsoon’s showers, but the tears and screams of people's happiness. The bar is still oil stained and the streets are still muddy, but no one cares. Little children ride on the shoulders of their family members. Motorcyclists rev their engines. People lean out their windows to hoot and holler. It’s like it wasn’t even the middle of the night just a little while ago. Everyone is awake and _alive_. They yell and shout and run through the streets past puddles and get on top of cars and scream out thanks to the gods. Most of all, they cry with an awe-inspiring thunder, “ _VIỆT NAM VÔ ĐỊCH!_ ”

She turns back to her bartender friend, who is now laughing and screaming with the rest. She shouts, because so many things in Vietnam have changed since she was a girl, even the words, “What does it mean?”

“It means Vietnam is the champion,” he yells back before picking up a tiger beer and thrusting it into her hands. 

She looks around and grins widely, just this side of feral.

Her father whispers in her ear (somehow both in weaving Vietnamese and the humming tones of Andromache’s ancient tongue), “We were born to defy, _bé con_. We are the children of sea dragons. We sacrifice. We cry. We fight, even when it doesn’t seem like there’s any hope anywhere. But most importantly, my little flower, we answer to no one.”

Quynh laughs and raises her drink to the memory. She takes a sip that blooms in crispness across her mouth and down her throat. She bursts with the rush of air, a feeling of once forgotten freedom stealing into her bones amidst the drink and night sky and warring memories.

Happiness infuses into her skin as she watches the riot all around her. She wanders into the crowd, bracketed on all sides by sound that lifts her up and humidity that has somehow lost its oppressive quality. Outside the bar’s door, she sees the stars peeking through fading rain clouds. Her smile grows into a grin, toothy and true, and she raises her drink to salute them too. Quynh closes her eyes to bask in it all.

This is still Vietnam. She is still who she is.

When she opens her eyes, endless red flags and a thousand gleaming stars billow past her; in a rush, she throws her beer away and climbs atop a rickety table to cry with everything in her lungs, “ _VIỆT NAM VÔ ĐỊCH!_ ”

The answering wash of sound and shout that surrounds her as she stands there, arms outstretched and glistening from sweat and rain, is glorious. 

She breathes.

She cries.

She tastes life.

....

When she comes back, Andromache is waiting. She sits in an old chair in the living room, arm resting across the tabletop.

Quynh knows what she must look like, dripping wet and splattered with mud, but Andromache just lets the quiet sit (she was always good at that, knowing when to speak and when to wait. Quynh isn’t one for patience, but Andromache has always had enough for them both). The quiet fills in every word they could say with the dawn. 

Light shimmers through the clear glass window; it trickles over an abandoned chess set, a half-empty tea pot, a forgotten bowl of sweet date mix, a broken telescope, an old grey whetstone, a peeled orange, and her bright yellow coat, which is draped over the chair next to Andromache.

As the glow fills her up, Quynh begins to smile. Andromache mirrors it with one of her own, small and blooming. Quynh’s heart rumbles in her chest as she peers into Andromache’s eyes to find a mass of conflict and beauty and eternity. Quynh wants to reach inside and lose herself in the depths of those brilliant green irises, so she does. It wells around her, not like the sea, but the sky. Suns and moons, nebulae and asteroids, comets and the inky black. It is deathless, and yet mortal.

She reaches out, for hope, for life, for something more. She traces constellations of moles along Andromache’s outstretched arm, and wonders at how much this feels like safety. She feels the brush of calloused knuckles on her cheek, and is enveloped by a sense of home and the scent of lavender. She presses her lips to bright pink bitten ones, and her heart bursts with love.

She remembers the stars as she watches Andromache’s eyes slip shut.

She remembers the taste of air as they gasp for it between each melding of skin and breath.

She remembers the exquisiteness of sound as she leans into rushing moans and bitten off gasps.

In these depths, everything is old but new as well. The fear dies, and only they remain.

They speak, amidst the galaxy. Andromache, with a delicious quirk to the corner of her mouth, teases, “What was that like?”

Quynh dips her head just enough to playfully knock their noses together; she whispers a half breath from her not lost love’s lips, “Excruciating.”

They laugh, and sparkle like the night.

**Author's Note:**

> The title of this fic is 'núi không gian,' which means 'mountain of space' or 'space mountain' in Vietnamese. It is, of course, a reference to Space Mountain the ride, which Nile talks about with Quynh; that scene inspired this entire fic. The title reflects how Quynh, in the end, is not trapped in the depths of the sea, but the depths of space.
> 
> Full disclosure: I haven't read the comics, this is just conjecture based on my own impressions. This fic is my love letter to Quynh and Vietnam. I took a class on the country this semester, and its history spoke to me just as much as its current reality, a sentiment shared with how I feel about Quynh. In her, I find the intersection of so many things; she has the capacity to truly be beautiful. This is my ode to that. As such, it is, once again, a self indulgent fic. But it was written as part of a Secret Santa on my Discord! This is for static_abyss here on AO3. We don't know each other that well, but I hope you enjoyed this. And it's for my whole Discord, really. Hi! Love you guys.
> 
> Now, onto the special thanks because I had some help writing this. First, I had a friend, Chris, who helped me with amazing background knowledge and fact-checking about Vietnam. Then, I truly had a sea of encouragement from so many people (Teo especially; thank you!), which is amazing given how truly long this fic is. Thank you so much, all of you. Musically, I have a few people to thank. First, there is Hildur Guðnadóttir, who wrote “Erupting Light,” a piece I listened to on repeat while writing. “Bo-Katan’s Theme” off of the Mandalorian soundtrack by Ludwig Göransson was my other go-to track, especially for the action scenes (which are not my thing, so I hope they read well). I also listened to the Detroit: Become Human soundtrack, which is super long but then so is this fic, so...
> 
> Finally, I bet you're wondering why there's a chess metaphor in this fic. The first answer is for the puns/pawns (queen and Quynh, rook and Booker). The second answer is that I just really like chess.
> 
> The translations are in the text, but here the other language bits are defined. They are sorted by language.
> 
> Vietnamese:
> 
> núi không gian- mountain of space
> 
> khô tiêu- a fish sauce caramel, often used as a sauce for pork, or 'thịt.' in this case, it coats fish, or 'cá.'
> 
> quê hương- home of my heart, home of my soul, deeply held in my spirit (more in the sense of place than person)
> 
> bé con- child of my blood
> 
> hoa quỳnh hương- yellow flowers associated with sacred rituals and offerings in Southern and Central Vietnam.
> 
> bánh mì- a Vietnamese sandwich, often eaten as a snack.
> 
> đụ má mày- you godless motherfucker
> 
> đụ má mày đồ con quần què đĩ lôn- fuck off, you useless son of a bitch
> 
> cao lầu- a noodle dish from Hoi An in Central Vietnam (which I think of as Quynh's hometown). it traditionally contains rice noodles, pork, greens, herbs, bean sprouts, and a little bit of broth. in a sense, the dish is comfort food for Quynh.
> 
> ca phê trung- egg coffee. a Vietnamese drink that beats egg yolks into sugar and coffee.
> 
> trời ơi- for the love of god. has the same sentiment as 'oh shit.'
> 
> Quan Am- the Vietnamese goddess of mercy who was drowned and came back to life. she is a Virgin Mary-like figure. statues of her can be found in the middle of ponds.
> 
> đi bảo- the oncoming storm. a Saigon specific term for riots after football matches.
> 
> Việt Nam vô địch- Vietnam is the champion. often shouted after football matches, no matter if Vietnam wins or loses.
> 
> French:
> 
> merde- shit
> 
> le roi- the king
> 
> Latin:
> 
> tuum est- (it) is yours
> 
> sola non capit regem regina- a queen does not take a king alone


End file.
